• 11/28/2004
  • Chicago, IL
  • no attribution
  • cbs2chicago.com

Follow-up care is extremely important for survivors of head and neck cancer. Blood tests, X-rays, CT scans and MRI’s can spot a recurrence of the disease. Now new findings suggest a PET scan may provide other life-saving information.

Ed Menassaka, 50, had to face the music two years ago when he was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. “It was in the base of my tongue, in my right tonsil, was in my neck and my lymph nodes,” Menassaka said.

After chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, Menassaka is now cancer-free. But he still needs frequent checkups to see if the disease comes back.

“Essentially if you have a cancer that occurs in this area, the most likely area where it’s gonna recur is in this area,” said Suresh Mukherji, a neuroradiologist at the University of Michigan Health System. But even if that area is clear, University of Michigan researchers say, the cancer can recur somewhere else.

“What we found out with our PET study was that unknowingly to anyone else, patients may have done fine here but some of them popped up with disease in their lungs,” Mukherji said.

Unlike other imaging tests, positron emission tomography – or PET – shows metabolic changes in cells.

“With the CAT scan or an MRI, you see basically the anatomy that’s before you. With a PET scan, what it allows you to do, it actually allows you to look inside the molecule,” said Mukherji. Because of the findings, Dr. Mukherji recommends patients at high risk for recurrent cancer have pet scans on a routine basis.

“There is so much reassurance knowing that you’re cancer-free and clearly the PET scan can give you that in a more objective method,” Mukherji said. Just knowing can help patients like Menassaka feel less strung out about the disease.

Head and neck cancers account for three percent of all cancers in the United States. Tobacco and alcohol are considered the major risk factors for the disease.